Washington, D.C., has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. This is no accident. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which invalidated the District’s bans on handguns and on possession of operable firearms in the home for self-defense, the D.C. Council immediately went to work on creating the strictest guns laws they could think of, supposedly to “comply” with the Court’s decision. Litigation on those laws began almost immediately and continues to this day.

At the centerpiece of D.C.’s gun control regime is an elaborate registration scheme, the absurdities of which have been highlighted by media outlets such as the Washington Post and the Washington Times, and most recently in the book Emily Gets Her Gun, by Washington Times senior opinion editor, Emily Miller.

Possession of an unregistered firearm is a crime in Washington, D.C. Carrying even a registered firearm outside one’s home is also presumptively unlawful.